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Yosemite / GA-Z97X-UD7 TH / i7-4790K Install Notes


dougaa
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I recently did a new install of Yosemite on a Gigabyte GA-Z97X TH motherboard, and with an i7-4790K CPU. I've been doing hackintosh installs for many years, and this was basically the same as previous installs. However there are few gotchas and things to be aware of. I found these on the internet in various places, and these notes put them all in one place. This is not a detailed guide, but notes for somewhat experienced people.

 

BIOS Settings

Before starting, I upgraded to the current BIOS, F5. I started with the optimized defaults, and found only one critical BIOS setting. Under BIOS Features, the VT-d setting must be disabled. When it was enabled, no matter what I did, Yosemite would only boot in safe mode.

 

AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

This kext is not necessary to use Thunderbolt. However, when it's present, it causes a 40-second or so pause during boot. Remove it from /System/Library/Extensions (I moved it to /disabled_extensions) and rebuild the kext cache.

 

Chameleon

I used Chameleon, but got frequent immediate boot errors with the latest release. This is fixed in a recent version, and the errors disappeared after I built and installed Chameleon r2670.

 

DSDT

No DSDT changes are necessary, however I like to have a DSDT I can modify. To decompile the DSDT to something I could compile, I found that I had to provide as input to iasl both DSDT.aml and SSDT5.aml. I obtained those from linux. After that there were only two changes to get the DSDT to compile. I removed all the "zero" lines starting around line 7304. Also, I removed the line "Arg0" around line 14823 in "Method (ADBG, 1, Serialized)".

 

SSDT

Creating an SSDT with ssdtPRGen worked well. I used version 15.6.

 

Networking

The open source AppleIntelE1000e kext works well for the built-in Intel ethernet.

 

HD 4600 Graphics

I'd never done an install before using the integrated graphics. All I had to do to get that working was to add these lines to org.chameleon.Boot.plist:

	<key>IntelAzulFB</key>
	<string>10</string>

smbios and FakeSMC config

I decided to configure my install as an iMac14,2. iMac15,1 would be closer, but there's very little information available so far for iMac15,1, and iMac14,2 is also a Haswell Mac. I found enough information to make an accurate smbios.plist for iMac14,2. These are the values I found:

	<key>SMbiosversion</key>
	<string>IM142.88Z.0118.B00.1309031249</string>
	<key>SMboardproduct</key>
	<string>Mac-27ADBB7B4CEE8E61</string>
	<key>SMfamily</key>
	<string>iMac</string>
	<key>SMproductname</key>
	<string>iMac14,2</string>

(You'll also need to generate an appropriate serial number.) Also, in FakeSMC, I changed the SMC version to 2.15f2 and the SMC name to smc-huronriver in Info.plist:

					<key>REV </key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVBF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVUF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>

and

				<key>smc-compatible</key>
				<string>smc-huronriver</string>

SpeedStep

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that at this point SpeedStep appeared to be working. MSRDumper showed me speeds of 8, 40, and 44. It's possible to get more speeds between 40 and 44 by changing the BIOS multipliers, but adding those reduced the GeekBench 3 score. With 8, 40, and 44, my 64-bit score is 17,694.

 

Cosmetic Changes

System Profiler was showing my CPU as a Xeon. That appears to be due to a bug in Chameleon r2670. A workaround is to hard-code the brand string in libsaio/cpu.c:

		p->CPU.BrandString[47] = '\0';
//		DBG("Brandstring = %s\n", p->CPU.BrandString);
	}

	strlcpy(p->CPU.BrandString, "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz", 48);

	//char *vendor = p->CPU.cpuid_vendor;
	switch (p->CPU.Vendor){
		case CPUID_VENDOR_INTEL:

where the strlcpy line is added as line 400.

 

Also, both the Intel and Marvell SATA controllers were showing up as generic AHCI devices. That can be fixed with a modified version of AHCIPortInjector.kext. Here is the replacement Info.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>English</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>org.chameleon.plist.AHCIPortInjector</string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>AHCI Chipsets Injector</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>KEXT</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string>????</string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>1.0.0</string>
	<key>IOKitPersonalities</key>
	<dict>
		<key>Intel9SeriesAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>9 Series Chipset</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci8086,8c82</string>
				<string>pci8086,8c83</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Intel</string>
		</dict>
		<key>MarvellAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>88SE9172</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci1b4b,9172</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Marvell</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>OSBundleRequired</key>
	<string>Local-Root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

(This fixes both Intel and Marvell.)

 

At this point I'm ready to try getting Thunderbolt to work, and I'll post an update if I get information about that. If anyone knows better solutions for the issues I encountered, please let me know.

 

Update: see #5 below for my initial experience with Thunderbolt.

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Hi  dougaa - I have the very same MB and CPU as yours - mine has an Invidia GTX-760 GPU, but your post is very helpful to me.

 

My questions are about what you did to get sound working on Yosemite 10.10.3?BTW- I am using Clover as my bootloader of choice.

 

Another person told me to get Thunderbolt ports to work, just set Security to Legacy in the BIOS? I have not been able to verify that.

 

I also created and partitioned an SSD and an HDD into three partitions and created Fusion drives with two of the three partition combinations.

 

Not too sure how that has worked out but I have Mavericks and Yosemite booting from Clover on the HDD and on the SSD,

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Hi  dougaa - I have the very same MB and CPU as yours - mine has an Invidia GTX-760 GPU, but your post is very helpful to me.

 

My questions are about what you did to get sound working on Yosemite 10.10.3?BTW- I am using Clover as my bootloader of choice.

 

Another person told me to get Thunderbolt ports to work, just set Security to Legacy in the BIOS? I have not been able to verify that.

 

I also created and partitioned an SSD and an HDD into three partitions and created Fusion drives with two of the three partition combinations.

 

Not too sure how that has worked out but I have Mavericks and Yosemite booting from Clover on the HDD and on the SSD,

Hi, for sound I sorted of cheated. For my builds, I've been using this USB sound device: http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-UCA202-Audio-Interface/dp/B000KW2YEI It's not overly expensive, and it's great, because you can plug it into any OS X machine and it just works. I'm sure it doesn't meet everyone's needs, but for me it's fine. I'll be experimenting with the built-in sound, and will use it if I can get it to work in a straightforward way. But with the USB device as an option, sound isn't a high priority for me.

 

I also plan to try out Clover, I guess it's the way of the future. But I started with Chameleon because I'm very familiar with it.

 

I've been reading that getting Thunderbolt to work requires running Windows with the Thunderbolt drivers installed one time. The speculation is that the Windows drivers do some kind of hardware configuration or setup that then allows Thunderbolt to work with OS X as well. But so far I have no idea whether that's correct or not. People are also saying that when Thunderbolt works, for a device to be recognized it must be connected and on at boot time.

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dougaa - There is a lot of good information about most things on www.rampagedev.com. I was told there to simply set up the Thunderbolt in the BIOS. Andrew Kern (rampagedev) has the same MB and CPU as well.

 

I used the USB loader information to get things done that I have gotten done.

 

One advantage of using Clover is that you can actually look like a real Macintosh to the App Store,

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I did some experimenting with Thunderbolt, and have it working after a fashion. In the BIOS, I set the Thunderbolt Security Level to "Legacy Mode", as many have recommended. I also disabled Wake from Thunderbolt Devices. Initially, Thunderbolt didn't work at all. Then I tried the "Windows" solution I'd read about. I installed Windows 7 on a second drive, and included the drivers from Gigabyte for the chipset and for Thunderbolt. I tested with this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LOLBBQQ/, and installed the driver from Kanex for it. The adapter worked in Windows, and when I went back to Yosemite, it worked in Yosemite as well. It continued to work when I removed the Windows disk. Even with Thunderbolt working, System Profiler still shows no Thunderbolt drivers loaded. The functions of the adapter show up as if I had installed PCI cards for them. Also, hotplug doesn't work. The adapter must be connected at boot time. I noticed that Yosemite doesn't explicitly support the motherboard's 9 Series chipset (that's why AHCIPortInjector is needed for Intel AHCI.) That support may be added in the next version of OS X, and there's a chance it would make Thunderbolt work better.

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I have the same mobo and working Thunderbolt as well - as you mentioned, all I needed to do was to install the drivers via Windows, and set Thunderbolt security level to "legacy mode" in the BIOS. As everyone has noted, hot swapping does not work, and the device needs to be connected at boot time for it to be recognized. I have tested the port with a external firewire HD connected via Thunderbolt Firewire adapter and with a OWC Thunderbay4 external enclosure.

 

The only issue I have noted is during large file transfers, where the drive/enclosure appears to hang (drive activity light stays on) and the computer freezes after a few gigs are transferred. I cannot recover to the Finder at these times, and when I reboot I can't seem to find anything in the system logs. Anyone else encounter these issues? For otherwise smaller file transfers and drive access, I don't notice any issues

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The only issue I have noted is during large file transfers, where the drive/enclosure appears to hang (drive activity light stays on) and the computer freezes after a few gigs are transferred. I cannot recover to the Finder at these times, and when I reboot I can't seem to find anything in the system logs. Anyone else encounter these issues? For otherwise smaller file transfers and drive access, I don't notice any issues

I've seen something similar happen with Firewire if an external drive overheats in it's enclosure. The drive stops responding rather than not work correctly. But a few gig is nothing at all. With Firewire, the Finder recovers if I unplug the cable. If you could reproduce the problem with a real Mac with Thunderbolt, you could get support from OWC.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi dudes!

 

I'm having these Kernel Panic. 

CPU Caller 4 "Machine Check at 0x000000010af6ff44, registers:\n"

In the attachment you can see the the whole thing.

 

I tried both [url=&quot;http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/&quot;]#####[/url] and Clover in order to get Yosemite 10.10.3

 

I also had problems installing Ubuntu with a bootloader, so I don't know whats happening with my PC.

 

Don't know much about computers and feel kind of desperate.

 

GA Z97X UD7 TH

Intel i7 4790K

Internal Graphics

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

 

post-1566949-0-42378900-1437502923_thumb.jpg

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Hi dudes!

 

I'm having these Kernel Panic. 

CPU Caller 4 "Machine Check at 0x000000010af6ff44, registers:\n"

In the attachment you can see the the whole thing.

 

I tried both ##### and Clover in order to get Yosemite 10.10.3

 

I also had problems installing Ubuntu with a bootloader, so I don't know whats happening with my PC.

 

Don't know much about computers and feel kind of desperate.

 

GA Z97X UD7 TH

Intel i7 4790K

Internal Graphics

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

 

Did you build your computer, and did you do any tests to make sure the hardware is working properly? If a straightforward install of Ubuntu (or another linux) doesn't work, there's probably some hardware problem you'll have to solve first. With linux installed, you could run memtest86+ to test the memory, and that's also a pretty good test of the machine as a whole. I always run it for a while after building a new machine. You can also make a memtest86+ boot disk or USB stick, and run it standalone.

 

For OS X, make sure VT-D is disabled in the BIOS, as I wrote above.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi!

 

So I managed to install Ubuntu. This could tell me that my hardware is alright at least at making one OS to function.

 

My current status is this:

Tried to install Yosemite 10.10.3 with Clover using this guide.

I change the EFI folder with this one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqyghhlg2o1c4yj/EFI%20Quadie.zip?dl=0

Moderator Quadie did it for me.

Change the BIOS Settings with this guide.

 

And finally it all freeze here:

Freeze%20Hackintosh%2030jul.JPG?dl=0

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Hi! 

 

I finally get to work Yosemite 10.10.4. 

I just used cpus=1 on config.plist. Activate it with Clover Configurator.

 

Now I have some problems with the Magic Trackpad and with Chrome Browser.

Trackpad has issues with most of the gestures. They just don't work. And I use the same trackpad on another hackintosh of a friend and was working just fine.

Chrome crashes every time I open it. Just a few seconds after.

 

Thunderbolt does not work yet. But haven't installed the drivers with Windows. Could this be done with Crossover? 

 

And the hackintosh is booting very slow. For the gear it is, should boot faster. I takes likes two and half minutes to get to the users login.

 

I didn't disable VT-d, which is weird, because in every place I read that it is needed but in the guide Quadie gave me it did not mention it at all.

Could this solve the slow booting issue?

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  • 3 months later...

I recently did a new install of Yosemite on a Gigabyte GA-Z97X TH motherboard, and with an i7-4790K CPU. I've been doing hackintosh installs for many years, and this was basically the same as previous installs. However there are few gotchas and things to be aware of. I found these on the internet in various places, and these notes put them all in one place. This is not a detailed guide, but notes for somewhat experienced people.

 

BIOS Settings

Before starting, I upgraded to the current BIOS, F5. I started with the optimized defaults, and found only one critical BIOS setting. Under BIOS Features, the VT-d setting must be disabled. When it was enabled, no matter what I did, Yosemite would only boot in safe mode.

 

AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

This kext is not necessary to use Thunderbolt. However, when it's present, it causes a 40-second or so pause during boot. Remove it from /System/Library/Extensions (I moved it to /disabled_extensions) and rebuild the kext cache.

 

Chameleon

I used Chameleon, but got frequent immediate boot errors with the latest release. This is fixed in a recent version, and the errors disappeared after I built and installed Chameleon r2670.

 

DSDT

No DSDT changes are necessary, however I like to have a DSDT I can modify. To decompile the DSDT to something I could compile, I found that I had to provide as input to iasl both DSDT.aml and SSDT5.aml. I obtained those from linux. After that there were only two changes to get the DSDT to compile. I removed all the "zero" lines starting around line 7304. Also, I removed the line "Arg0" around line 14823 in "Method (ADBG, 1, Serialized)".

 

SSDT

Creating an SSDT with ssdtPRGen worked well. I used version 15.6.

 

Networking

The open source AppleIntelE1000e kext works well for the built-in Intel ethernet.

 

HD 4600 Graphics

I'd never done an install before using the integrated graphics. All I had to do to get that working was to add these lines to org.chameleon.Boot.plist:

	<key>IntelAzulFB</key>
	<string>10</string>

smbios and FakeSMC config

I decided to configure my install as an iMac14,2. iMac15,1 would be closer, but there's very little information available so far for iMac15,1, and iMac14,2 is also a Haswell Mac. I found enough information to make an accurate smbios.plist for iMac14,2. These are the values I found:

	<key>SMbiosversion</key>
	<string>IM142.88Z.0118.B00.1309031249</string>
	<key>SMboardproduct</key>
	<string>Mac-27ADBB7B4CEE8E61</string>
	<key>SMfamily</key>
	<string>iMac</string>
	<key>SMproductname</key>
	<string>iMac14,2</string>

(You'll also need to generate an appropriate serial number.) Also, in FakeSMC, I changed the SMC version to 2.15f2 and the SMC name to smc-huronriver in Info.plist:

					<key>REV </key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVBF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVUF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>

and

				<key>smc-compatible</key>
				<string>smc-huronriver</string>

SpeedStep

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that at this point SpeedStep appeared to be working. MSRDumper showed me speeds of 8, 40, and 44. It's possible to get more speeds between 40 and 44 by changing the BIOS multipliers, but adding those reduced the GeekBench 3 score. With 8, 40, and 44, my 64-bit score is 17,694.

 

Cosmetic Changes

System Profiler was showing my CPU as a Xeon. That appears to be due to a bug in Chameleon r2670. A workaround is to hard-code the brand string in libsaio/cpu.c:

		p->CPU.BrandString[47] = '\0';
//		DBG("Brandstring = %s\n", p->CPU.BrandString);
	}

	strlcpy(p->CPU.BrandString, "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz", 48);

	//char *vendor = p->CPU.cpuid_vendor;
	switch (p->CPU.Vendor){
		case CPUID_VENDOR_INTEL:

where the strlcpy line is added as line 400.

 

Also, both the Intel and Marvell SATA controllers were showing up as generic AHCI devices. That can be fixed with a modified version of AHCIPortInjector.kext. Here is the replacement Info.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>English</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>org.chameleon.plist.AHCIPortInjector</string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>AHCI Chipsets Injector</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>KEXT</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string>????</string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>1.0.0</string>
	<key>IOKitPersonalities</key>
	<dict>
		<key>Intel9SeriesAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>9 Series Chipset</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci8086,8c82</string>
				<string>pci8086,8c83</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Intel</string>
		</dict>
		<key>MarvellAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>88SE9172</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci1b4b,9172</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Marvell</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>OSBundleRequired</key>
	<string>Local-Root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

(This fixes both Intel and Marvell.)

 

At this point I'm ready to try getting Thunderbolt to work, and I'll post an update if I get information about that. If anyone knows better solutions for the issues I encountered, please let me know.

 

Update: see #5 below for my initial experience with Thunderbolt.

 

I've ordered this motherboard and I'm waiting for it to build my new hackintosh

 

Can you please post your DSDT and your SSDT? It would save me some time. Thanks!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for making this thread, it came in really useful when i was setting up my board.

 

I've used clover as i just can't get it to be stable with chameleon or chimera.. going to clover made it work really well and with a GTX980 also. Everything works BUT i get the generic ahci issue and my PCI Sata cards (based on AS1061) don't work with my disc burners.

 

I understand i can inject the SATA info that you posted into clover but i'm not clued up enough to know how to do it just yet.

 

Have you made the jump to Clover?

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I recently did a new install of Yosemite on a Gigabyte GA-Z97X TH motherboard, and with an i7-4790K CPU. I've been doing hackintosh installs for many years, and this was basically the same as previous installs. However there are few gotchas and things to be aware of. I found these on the internet in various places, and these notes put them all in one place. This is not a detailed guide, but notes for somewhat experienced people.

 

BIOS Settings

Before starting, I upgraded to the current BIOS, F5. I started with the optimized defaults, and found only one critical BIOS setting. Under BIOS Features, the VT-d setting must be disabled. When it was enabled, no matter what I did, Yosemite would only boot in safe mode.

 

AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

This kext is not necessary to use Thunderbolt. However, when it's present, it causes a 40-second or so pause during boot. Remove it from /System/Library/Extensions (I moved it to /disabled_extensions) and rebuild the kext cache.

 

Chameleon

I used Chameleon, but got frequent immediate boot errors with the latest release. This is fixed in a recent version, and the errors disappeared after I built and installed Chameleon r2670.

 

DSDT

No DSDT changes are necessary, however I like to have a DSDT I can modify. To decompile the DSDT to something I could compile, I found that I had to provide as input to iasl both DSDT.aml and SSDT5.aml. I obtained those from linux. After that there were only two changes to get the DSDT to compile. I removed all the "zero" lines starting around line 7304. Also, I removed the line "Arg0" around line 14823 in "Method (ADBG, 1, Serialized)".

 

SSDT

Creating an SSDT with ssdtPRGen worked well. I used version 15.6.

 

Networking

The open source AppleIntelE1000e kext works well for the built-in Intel ethernet.

 

HD 4600 Graphics

I'd never done an install before using the integrated graphics. All I had to do to get that working was to add these lines to org.chameleon.Boot.plist:

	<key>IntelAzulFB</key>
	<string>10</string>

smbios and FakeSMC config

I decided to configure my install as an iMac14,2. iMac15,1 would be closer, but there's very little information available so far for iMac15,1, and iMac14,2 is also a Haswell Mac. I found enough information to make an accurate smbios.plist for iMac14,2. These are the values I found:

	<key>SMbiosversion</key>
	<string>IM142.88Z.0118.B00.1309031249</string>
	<key>SMboardproduct</key>
	<string>Mac-27ADBB7B4CEE8E61</string>
	<key>SMfamily</key>
	<string>iMac</string>
	<key>SMproductname</key>
	<string>iMac14,2</string>

(You'll also need to generate an appropriate serial number.) Also, in FakeSMC, I changed the SMC version to 2.15f2 and the SMC name to smc-huronriver in Info.plist:

					<key>REV </key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVBF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>
					<key>RVUF</key>
					<array>
						<string>{rev</string>
						<data>
						AhUPAAAC
						</data>
					</array>

and

				<key>smc-compatible</key>
				<string>smc-huronriver</string>

SpeedStep

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that at this point SpeedStep appeared to be working. MSRDumper showed me speeds of 8, 40, and 44. It's possible to get more speeds between 40 and 44 by changing the BIOS multipliers, but adding those reduced the GeekBench 3 score. With 8, 40, and 44, my 64-bit score is 17,694.

 

Cosmetic Changes

System Profiler was showing my CPU as a Xeon. That appears to be due to a bug in Chameleon r2670. A workaround is to hard-code the brand string in libsaio/cpu.c:

		p->CPU.BrandString[47] = '\0';
//		DBG("Brandstring = %s\n", p->CPU.BrandString);
	}

	strlcpy(p->CPU.BrandString, "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz", 48);

	//char *vendor = p->CPU.cpuid_vendor;
	switch (p->CPU.Vendor){
		case CPUID_VENDOR_INTEL:

where the strlcpy line is added as line 400.

 

Also, both the Intel and Marvell SATA controllers were showing up as generic AHCI devices. That can be fixed with a modified version of AHCIPortInjector.kext. Here is the replacement Info.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>English</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>org.chameleon.plist.AHCIPortInjector</string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>AHCI Chipsets Injector</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>KEXT</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string>????</string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>1.0.0</string>
	<key>IOKitPersonalities</key>
	<dict>
		<key>Intel9SeriesAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>9 Series Chipset</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci8086,8c82</string>
				<string>pci8086,8c83</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Intel</string>
		</dict>
		<key>MarvellAHCI</key>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string>
			<key>Chipset Name</key>
			<string>88SE9172</string>
			<key>IOClass</key>
			<string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string>
			<key>IONameMatch</key>
			<array>
				<string>pci1b4b,9172</string>
			</array>
			<key>IOProbeScore</key>
			<integer>2000</integer>
			<key>IOProviderClass</key>
			<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
			<key>Vendor Name</key>
			<string>Marvell</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>OSBundleRequired</key>
	<string>Local-Root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

(This fixes both Intel and Marvell.)

 

At this point I'm ready to try getting Thunderbolt to work, and I'll post an update if I get information about that. If anyone knows better solutions for the issues I encountered, please let me know.

 

Update: see #5 below for my initial experience with Thunderbolt.

 

 

Hello Dougaa

 

I have another question... How did you get to update your bios? I tried the efiflash utility from gigabyte's site and I got a message saying it's not supported on 64-bit operation system. So I installed 32-bit windows 10 and I kept getting errors. My motherboard is revision 1.1

 

I am trying to use QFLASH from within the bios but I can't seem to read the bios file from any of my drives. I formatted one of my drives to Fat 32 and I still can't see the bios file which is on the disk. Not that it's really important to do this but it would be nice to be able to flash the latest bios. I also tried to put the file on a usb stick but qflash doesn't seem to detect it.

 

Thanks!!

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Thanks for making this thread, it came in really useful when i was setting up my board.

 

I've used clover as i just can't get it to be stable with chameleon or chimera.. going to clover made it work really well and with a GTX980 also. Everything works BUT i get the generic ahci issue and my PCI Sata cards (based on AS1061) don't work with my disc burners.

 

I understand i can inject the SATA info that you posted into clover but i'm not clued up enough to know how to do it just yet.

 

Have you made the jump to Clover?

I've been getting experience with Clover, and it's clearly a better choice than Chameleon. I'm about to start using Clover with the GA-Z97X-UD7 TH. When I have it working, I'll create a new topic for using El Capitan and Clover. I also now have information about iMac15,1 which I'll try to use.

 

To use the SATA Info.plist that I posted, get a copy of AHCIPortInjector.kext, and replace Info.plist in it with the one that I posted. Although I haven't tested it, I'd expect that to work with Clover. It would be an alternative to having Clover do injection.

Hello Dougaa

 

I have another question... How did you get to update your bios? I tried the efiflash utility from gigabyte's site and I got a message saying it's not supported on 64-bit operation system. So I installed 32-bit windows 10 and I kept getting errors. My motherboard is revision 1.1

 

I am trying to use QFLASH from within the bios but I can't seem to read the bios file from any of my drives. I formatted one of my drives to Fat 32 and I still can't see the bios file which is on the disk. Not that it's really important to do this but it would be nice to be able to flash the latest bios. I also tried to put the file on a usb stick but qflash doesn't seem to detect it.

 

Thanks!!

I use a DOS-formatted USB stick, and copy the firmware file onto it, such as Z97XU7TH.F6. Q-Flash seems to only find USB drives that are connected to rear motherboard connectors. As long as I use those, I haven't had a problem. An alternative would be to create a DOS bootable USB drive, copy Efiflash.exe and the firmware onto it, and run Efiflash. I think I had to do that for a BIOS update that was incompatible with Q-Flash. I don't remember if it was this motherboard, or another Gigabyte one. I've never tried to do an update using Windows.

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thanks for the reply mate, i actually ended up inserting your plist dictionaries into fakeSMC within the EFI partition kext in the 10.10 folder. I also grabbed the dictionary entry for the ASmedia1061 as i've got two of those cards in the machine too.

 

My burners still don't work perfectly but good enough to get the job done for now. Stability still seems really good. Next is to get things like speed step and sleep and those other finer details sorted.

 

Good luck with your move to clover, i think its a really clean way of doing it!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello Douga

 

I have a question again :-) I am experiencing sudden unexpected restarts (rarely). When the computer restarts it takes a much longer until I see the initial Gigabyte bios image. Sometimes the computer

 

wakes up from sleep (rarely again) and restarts on it's own. I think I didn't have this problems with the F5 bios version. They started when I upgraded to F6. Wake up on lan is disabled. Have you

 

experienced anything like this? Here are my bios settings 

 

- Memory profile (XMP) = Profile1
- Turbo Boost Technology = Disabled
- VT-d = disabled
- Boot Mode Selection = Legacy only
- XHCI Mode = Auto
- Legacy USB support = Enabled 
- XHCI Hand-off = Enabled
- EHCI Hand-off = Enabled
- Turn on SATA-Mode to AHCI 
- Intel Thunderbolt Technology = Enabled   (I used the windows driver method like you said)

 

I've got an EVGA GT 740 SC installed as well. I'm running Yosemite 10.10.5

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Hello Douga

 

I have a question again :-) I am experiencing sudden unexpected restarts (rarely). When the computer restarts it takes a much longer until I see the initial Gigabyte bios image. Sometimes the computer

 

wakes up from sleep (rarely again) and restarts on it's own. I think I didn't have this problems with the F5 bios version. They started when I upgraded to F6. Wake up on lan is disabled. Have you

 

experienced anything like this? Here are my bios settings 

 

- Memory profile (XMP) = Profile1

- Turbo Boost Technology = Disabled

- VT-d = disabled

- Boot Mode Selection = Legacy only

- XHCI Mode = Auto

- Legacy USB support = Enabled 

- XHCI Hand-off = Enabled

- EHCI Hand-off = Enabled

- Turn on SATA-Mode to AHCI 

- Intel Thunderbolt Technology = Enabled   (I used the windows driver method like you said)

 

I've got an EVGA GT 740 SC installed as well. I'm running Yosemite 10.10.5

Once when I woke up from the screen saver, I saw something like that happen, but so far it's just been that one isolated incident. I think when the BIOS detects it was not rebooted in a normal way, it makes extra checks and takes longer to restart. I think if the BIOS detected a serious problem, it would revert its settings to safe defaults, or maybe previous settings that worked. That might happen for unstable overclocking. Your BIOS settings look ok to me. As far as I know, you could go back to BIOS F5 if you wanted to.

 

I could never get El Capitan to work on my machine with Chameleon. I'm using Clover now with El Capitan, and except for that one incident it's been very stable. I'm still working on getting the best Clover configuration. It seems a little overwhelming compared to Chameleon. Right now I feel like I'm lucky that I found a configuration that works, rather than really understanding all the settings. But it definitely is working well.

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I also get an occational kernel panic I forgot to mention. But that's like 1 out of 20 times I restart. I almost never

 

restart since I put it to sleep. Thanks again for getting back to me. Please let us know if you figure out better settings for clover (I'm also on Clover). I will  give it a try to go back to F5 although I'm a bit scared

 

in case something goes wrong.

 

Thanks again!

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